Homeless are suffering extra bad during coronavirus pandemic

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to go on, the homeless are suffering the most.

With few people on the streets, there are fewer people to give them food or money. Many charities that provided food and services to the homeless have closed, due to health and safety reasons. Most fastfood restaurants where the homeless could buy a cheap hot meal will not sell to customers unless they are inside a car at the drive-through window. Coffee shops and libraries are closed, so the homeless can not loiter there. And of course shelters are not a safe place to be right now, due to the risk of disease spread. (Indeed many shelters have temporarily closed)

To make matters worse, some low wage workers have lost their jobs and are newly finding themselves homeless.

As the coronavirus spreads, unhoused people are among the most vulnerable to infection.

Covid-19 outbreak continues, the challenges they face have only gotten more extreme. Shelters are full, or closed, or too fraught with coronavirus risk to consider sleeping in. They have no access to toilets, much less toilet paper. They’ve been laid off, and there’s nobody on the street so they can’t even panhandle. Common places to find shelter and a bathroom—libraries, gyms, fast food restaurants—are closed. Soup kitchens are closing, out of food, out of workers.

For everyone else this is "quarantine and chill". When you're homeless there is no quarantine, or chill. Unless you're the type that is comfortable laying on the ground in public.

Homelessness is incompatible with health. Experts like Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco who studies homelessness, have been saying so for decades, but, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it's never been truer. “It’s a calamity. It’s our worst nightmare,” Kushel says. “It’s an enormous crisis superimposed on an existing crisis.” Unhoused people are already among the most sick in society, and now they’re physically incapable of following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most basic virus-fighting directive: stay home.

It’s nearly impossible for homeless people to maintain social distance. Their needs are met en masse. The CDC recommends 110 square feet per person for people housed together during the outbreak. Most homeless shelters simply don’t have that kind of space. “There has always been an increased risk of communicable diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis A, and influenza,” Kushel says. Covid-19 is just the newest addition to the list. Some shelters are rearranging the furniture to house people farther apart, but those adjustments inevitably mean fewer beds, leaving more people outdoors. In Las Vegas, people are sleeping in parking lots, confined to white painted rectangles spaced six feet apart.

Even before the outbreak, many homeless people were left totally unsheltered. In California, where Governor Gavin Newsom estimates some 60,000 homeless people could end up infected with coronavirus, two thirds of the unhoused population lives outdoors, which is about twice the national average. Unsheltered people still rely on congregate settings to meet their basic needs, like food and hygiene, though the latter often goes unmet. “These mass feeding events, they have very good intentions, but they often don’t think about the public health side of things,” says Drew Capone, a water sanitation and hygiene researcher at Georgia Tech. “We saw in our research in Atlanta that most open defecation happens within 400 feet of a soup kitchen. Not a lot of hand washing goes on. They’re not opening toilets to folks.” According to a Reddit user who wished to remain anonymous, “Having nowhere to poop is the worst part.”

The conditions of homelessness would leave a healthy person vulnerable to catching a disease like Covid-19, and unhoused people tend not to be healthy. Your first needs are finding food and a place to sleep. Healthful behaviors come next. In addition to not being able to maintain good hygiene or a good diet, unhoused people disproportionately suffer from lung disease, heart disease, hypertension, and cancer, which are all risk factors for experiencing Covid-19’s more severe and deadly symptoms. Being exposed to the cold at night makes the lungs more susceptible to diseases like pneumonia, let alone someone like Covid-19. Homeless also tend to be older: Half are 50 years old and up. They also age prematurely. If they're 50, physiologically, medically, their bodies act more like they’re 70 or 80 because of the unique issues and difficulties of being homeless.​

https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-covid-19-homeless/

While cases of the new coronavirus skyrocket across the United States, especially in hotspots like New Orleans and New York City, government leaders and public health officials repeat a new national refrain: “Stay home.” The White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued clear guidance that in order to “flatten the curve,” or reduce the national caseload to prevent overwhelming hospital capacity, Americans must practice social distancing and stay at home as much as possible. But for the approximately 550,000 homeless persons in the United States, the spread of Covid-19 presents a uniquely grave threat. For these people, calls to remain home are impossible to heed.

According to The New York Times, “the largest homeless population in the country” can be found in New York City, where there are now nearly 52,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19.​

https://www.americamagazine.org/pol...le-who-are-homeless-covid-19-crisis-continues

I recently talked to a homeless man who said he had not eaten in 3 days. Apparently many people who, in normal times, might otherwise have given them some money or food, are now reluctant to approach a homeless person, due to fear of catching the coronavirus. (Especially if the person looks dirty or dingy, there's a subconscious connection to disease) And the homeless are probably much more likely to catch the coronavirus, due to their situation.

Some homeless do not have access to clean safe drinking water, with so many places closed. (When you're homeless, it's kind of hard to carry much water around with you, due to the weight) Many of the homeless I saw seemed to be drinking most of their fluids in the form of overpriced soda purchased from convenience stores, since the big supermarkets were too far away and outside walking distance for them. (Especially with some of them being in poor health, or having to carry around heavy packs of their belongings)
I distributed some gallon containers of water to them, but those may be too heavy for them to carry around. For those camped out, apparently it's difficult for many of them to walk back and forth from the areas where they sleep and stash their belongings, and the areas where they panhandle. The homeless must be in desperate situation because there seems to be more of them out than usual. Some waiting out there all day and not getting anything.

 

Yup, it sucks to be homeless now. Diseases are the worst enemy of the poor. This is a serious issue and it needs to be addressed properly.

 

It won't be. Nobody cares. (or rather only small fraction of society really cares, to be a little more precise)

But care about them or not, the homeless, as a group, will likely serve as a reservoir for disease, if nothing is done.

Right now, it almost seems like the strategy is to starve them out.
I live in a very progressive liberal area. And the progressives won't go anywhere near them, right now. Totally freaked out about any possibility they could catch the virus.
The type of people in society most likely to help also happen to be the type most likely to avoid leaving their homes.
The Christian charities have shutdown and are not distributing food.

 

The only way to address this(especially for the low wage workers) is well....we all know it. Open up the economy. The medical system asked us an unhealthy ask, we moronically fulfilled it and according to the numbers, granted them the reprieve they needed. Now they need to step back and let society reorganize.

 

Another paradox here: The Paradox of Poverty

With people so worried about their own wellbeing (both economic and health), they are less inclined towards caring about other people in need.
It's mostly sort of a natural psychological response. People feeling fear are less generous.

 

P.S. If you want to see how little most people care about this issue, just notice how few comments this thread is going to get.

I predict people will avoid this thread like the plague. (pun intended)

 

Homeless dont vote, AOC and her ilk, could care less.

 

Oh, in some states they do vote, whether they want to or not...
You would be surprised how many homeless individuals went out of their way to be registered to vote.
Some of these homeless people are still voting after they're dead...

 

Homeless dont vote, AOC and h

And they all vote for Democrats, naturally,

 

They only need them to be alive.

 

That doesn’t take into account people for example who are on the street because of mental health issues or people who are victims of domestic abuse. Note we’re talking about people who live on the streets. Most homeless people have temporary places to stay. Just not permant ones. The issue with everything closed is they can’t apply for jobs because they don’t have a permant address.it won’t matter how open the economy is if they don’t have a way to collect the mail.

 

I know what you mean. This is a serious issue and I’m glad you brought it up. This is something we need to talk about and figure out a policy for.

 

PO box

 

I hate that. I hate that stupid double standard. Let the government solve your issues and don’t lift a finger about the problem. I was homeless myself so I know what you mean by people ignoring the problem.

 

Costs money. Being poor is expensive.

 

Couple bucks or so a month? About a quart of beer?

 

Pretty hard to store food when you don’t have a fridge. Po boxes might not be in accessible neighborhood. Medical issues make walking hard. Hard to stash stuff.

 

I too, have been homeless. Majority piss away their $ on alcohol and dope. The vast majority, can afford and access a PO box.

 

Yup. Pretty hard to hope for tomorrow when there’s no hope today.

 

This is about the time of year when the police do their spring sweeps of homeless camps. They aren't doing them this year, so the homeless benefit from not being hassled by the police for a few months. Plus, they all qualify for a $1200 stimulus check. For someone who lives day to day on handouts, $1200 must be like winning the lottery.

 

What a stereotypical and myopic view. Did you know some homeless dont exist on handouts?

 

Yes. But I think many of them are not going to get the check. First of all, from what I've seen, many of them don't have the wherewithal to figure out how to get the checks. Especially since they don't have a mailing address, and may not have filled out a tax form for several years. May not have an active bank account. A lot of them are just not that good at figuring stuff out (the reason they're homeless in the first place) or are so rundown by their situation they are not good at figuring stuff out. And then of course not having transportation can make things more difficult, and some might not have even heard of the stimulus check or what to do. Right now they don't even have access to the internet because the public libraries are shut down. They might not be filled in on the news that everyone else is, no televission. Some of them don't even have identification cards/documents, and it can be difficult to replace with no money and no transportation.
And that's even assuming stimulus checks are actually going to be sent out, which is not a sure thing at this point.

Still, $1200 is like a million dollars to a homeless person, and I am sure most of them will bring themselves to try to figure out how to get it.

Public transportation has also stopped, during the pandemic. Where I live, they are requiring "reservations" for a public pick-up bus. Well reservations can be pretty difficult to make for someone without computer access or a mobile phone. Some of the homeless with computers and phones don't even have a place to plug them in and charge them now.
I'm just pointing out, there could be a lot of hurdles and difficulties for a homeless individual to do everything they would have to do to get the stimulus check.
Some would be in a better position to get it than others.

 

Our homeless is the least of our problems. Saving them doesn't help society or get the economy moving, especially when their plight is often self inflicted. Getting the economy going is priority #1 since without it, it won't matter if 40K or 400k die. Some will survive, but all 300+ Million of us will be suffering. And giving $1200 to a homeless person will help them for a week then they'll be homeless again. Its mostly pointless.

 

Yes, it's true, their plight is very often self-inflicted, if you take a good look at the homeless population. But it's very often not too.
It's hard to apply sweeping generalizations.
At least in the area I'm in, housing prices have been rapidly climbing over the last decade and it can be very difficult for some people to afford and find housing, at least in this area. The fast growing population has led to affordable housing shortages. New housing is being built, but it's a lot more expensive than the past old run-down housing. Some people are not willing to leave the area, because they are afraid of the unknown. For others, they would be far removed from emergency family assistance.

 

One other issue to mention, laundromats are closed. So homeless people will not have anywhere to be able to wash their clothes.

The apartments around here all have locks on their laundry rooms.